I don't monkey around when it comes to safety. Certainly not suggesting tossing the tether overboard. But, how often do we actually connect it when on the water?..I know I don't as often as I should -- that is - all the time.

My device, and I will post pictures and info for those who may be interested, will be designed to clip-on your belt or velcro'd to my life jacket.
SIBs just don't have much to grab onto should one lose their balance due to the low to water tubes.

Simply put, it will do two things. One, shut-down the outboard and turn-on an SOS strobe, to be located directly under the stern lamp and mount-pole.
I first went to see an engineer about the idea, for both Common Boaters and Large Fishing vessels, eg Crab Boats in Alaska. The Commercial use was for any crew member falling overboard where minutes is all he has before falling victim to exposure.

That unit would immediately send a warning to the captain in the bridge so there would be no time-delay between falling overboard and being noticed - missing by another crew member.
The engineering of the commercial unit alone was estimated at $ 54,000.00 dollars for 8-12 crew members. I'm looking for investors.

The unit for common boaters/fishermen, especially lone-fishermen will cost under 80.00.

How many units would you need to sell to get your investment back? I know you aren't thinking £80 for the commercial unit. But what stops your commercial unit using your £80 jobs? Even if the investment for the "common" boater is only £5k, And 10% of your £80 is "profit" (you'll not find many investors keen to go for a price point of that, You need to sell 625 of them to break even. For £50 of my Child's Inheritance I want to get £100 back in 5 years... afterall I'm taking a risk with my money. So I need you to have sold 1300 of them in 5 years to give me my money back. But in addition to cost of goods, insurance, marketing etc I guess you want a wage from this? But your turnover will be less than £20k per year at that rate... Oh and I don't think you'll sell 60 of them without spending at least £5k a year on marketing etc...

As a home build - I dont think its crazy. To compete with the big boys - forget it...

I don't monkey around when it comes to safety. Certainly not suggesting tossing the tether overboard. But, how often do we actually connect it when on the water?..I know I don't as often as I should -- that is - all the time.

your first sentence and your last seem slightly contradictory. If you came to the UK and looked at competently trained skippers from the RYA I believe you would see kill cord use for 98+% of the time afloat (* arbitrary statistic based on guy feel).

Quote:

My device, and I will post pictures and info for those who may be interested, will be designed to clip-on your belt or velcro'd to my life jacket.
SIBs just don't have much to grab onto should one lose their balance due to the low to water tubes.

Simply put, it will do two things. One, shut-down the outboard and turn-on an SOS strobe, to be located directly under the stern lamp and mount-pole.

Most SIBs won't have a light at all. I'm not trying to dismiss your solution but there really is little reason in a tiller steered SIB not to use the simple "tether" approach. There is one very simple trick to re-engineer this happening which I will explain below.

Quote:

I first went to see an engineer about the idea, for both Common Boaters and Large Fishing vessels, eg Crab Boats in Alaska. The Commercial use was for any crew member falling overboard where minutes is all he has before falling victim to exposure.

That unit would immediately send a warning to the captain in the bridge so there would be no time-delay between falling overboard and being noticed - missing by another crew member.
The engineering of the commercial unit alone was estimated at $ 54,000.00 dollars for 8-12 crew members. I'm looking for investors.

The unit for common boaters/fishermen, especially lone-fishermen will cost under 80.00.

OK I think commercially you have a better opportunity in the "big boat" sector than the SIB/RIB market. However there are a small handful of established commercial vendors with proven solutions servicing this market - to the extent that the UK RNLI is no longer offering its own solution in a crowded market: http://rnli.org/safety/respect-the-w...Pages/MOB.aspx. The biggest issues you have with commercial boats is the "it wont happen to me" psychology.

Poly's rant on how to save lives at NO cost with kill cords tomorrow!If your mission is to make better use of the existing low tech solution all it needs it a very simple change. Rather than sharing one kill cord between all drivers and disconnecting the "user" end to swap between drivers if you make the standard operating procedure that the KC remains "permanently" attached to trusted users PFD (you do wear a PFD don't you?) then the practice is to disconnect the ENGINE (or remote control) end of the cord every time you leave the console - either to go ashore, to swap drivers etc. That practice - which quickly becomes a "discipline" means that there is never a dangling cord not attached to anyone. The only time this sort of approach is unsuitable is in really dodgy conditions where you might not want to risk turning the engine off - I assume the skipper is competent to risk assess that and work around it appropriately.

If so yes I agree - everyone who is "authorised" to use the boat has their own KC attached to their own Bouyancy Aid/LifeJacket - in a fairly permanent way where it becomes easier to pull the KC than unclip the other end. In cases of helm change even if they don't do SOP and switch of and change the KC remains attached to someone (Padstow would have been far safer). If you really wanted to keep engine on (maybe its been having a temper tantrum on todays journey) but also wanted to change helm(maybe the guy who knows engines is on the helm) if you've got the right style of switch you can hold the plunger out while you hot swap connections... should something go wrong while hot swapping your fingers will no longer be on the plunger and so it will kill.

The issue is where people want to moor up, lift anchor, drop anchor, etc while the engine is on and they want to just slip off the red cord from their wrist for 5 minutes. As (?)another thread here mentioned very recently there are things that can be done the engineer many of those needs to leave the console away too...